from 'born standing up'

[beardedlamb]

here's a quote from steve martin's new autobiography about his stand-up career. i think it works well for those who might find themselves in an "improv slump" which i seem to see on the boards and hear around the greenroom water cooler a lot lately.

"Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."
-- Steve Martin

[mpbrockman]

I hesitate to respond here since I'm not an improv actor per se, but nonetheless...

Isn't "inspiration" an overrated part of the creative process anyway? I've never really noticed any difference in quality between the music I produce when I'm inspired to write something and the music I produce when I sit down and say "I'm going to write something now". It's much more about the craft.

Usually it's when plying the craft that inspiration hits anyway. When I spend time looking for inspiration I usually end up wasting a lot of time, and if I waited for inspiration to strike out of the blue I'd rarely get anything done. It's nice when that happens, but it's not necessary.

I find personally that taking a break from music works well when I find myself getting repetitive, but if it's just "writer's block" then making myself write something, anything, is the best way to get everything flowing again.

Anybody else find this to be true? False? Irrelevant to improv?

[Jessica]

I'm reading this book right now. It is very interesting and he writes really well. There are lots more little nuggets of wisdom in it. I would totally suggest reading it.

[kbadr]

Anybody else find this to be true? False? Irrelevant to improv?

Because improv is a very real-time creative process, I've found that inspiration is really important. In fact, I've noticed that personally, my best shows are the ones that are launched by a suggestion that excites me. There's just something about starting the show with that energy that carries into the rest of the show wonderfully.

[kaci_beeler]

Yeah, I agree with Kareem. I've found it to be very important to the overall show if the improvisers are inspired at the top. Like, they have an inspiring format, or a suggestion that excites them.
Sure, one can do a show off of a single random word like "tulip", one can do some improv around it, maybe kinda ignore it after mentioning something about mother's tulips. But sometimes the suggestion can be so much more than proof that the following piece is improvised, or even as a tiny jumping off point for the show.
I've gotten suggestions before that immediately put me in a time and place, because they were just that interesting for some reason. Or they gave me a character idea right off the bat, so I could start off running, instead of working up to that pace - with some mumbling around with awkward introductions or explanations.

Now I think, either take a suggestion that inspires your group, or don't take one at all.

[mpbrockman]

Anybody else find this to be true? False? Irrelevant to improv?

Because improv is a very real-time creative process, I've found that inspiration is really important. In fact, I've noticed that personally, my best shows are the ones that are launched by a suggestion that excites me. There's just something about starting the show with that energy that carries into the rest of the show wonderfully.

You're right. Writing isn't a great metaphor, but I would have to say the same applies to playing in a jazz ensemble - and I've noted elsewhere on this forum how many parallels there are between playing with jazz guys and working with improvisation actors.

I'll I'm saying is that in my experience practicing good craft produces more inspiration than inspiration produces good craft.

Craft - another one of those words that looks stupid when you type it too many times. (Blouse, blouse, blouse...)

[York99]

I've never really noticed any difference in quality between the music I produce when I'm inspired to write something and the music I produce when I sit down and say "I'm going to write something now". It's much more about the craft.

A very important part for me is the inspiration to sit down and say "I'm going to write something [or improvise] now."

If I'm improvising ONLY because I've got a show scheduled, I'm probably not going to do very well. If I'm totally inspired or whatever by the night, the people, the audience, the atmosphere, the energy, etc, then I'm much more likely to have a good show.

[DollarBill]

"Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration."
-- Steve Martin

I don't get it. What kind of delusions?

That said: I find I'm most inspired to write music when I'm listening to music (which I hate because I don't wanna rip anything off) or when i'm watching a movie that hits me at the core.

I find I'm inspired on stage when my scene partner is super listeny/committed. But really it comes down to a weird energy. Sometimes I just feel connected with the other people on stage. It really feels like I'm not even doing anything. Everyone is just so inspiring that it's like they're telling me what to say and do. Or at least they're telling my brain and then my brain is like "Say something about a penis, but don't use the word penis. Use a 5-syllable nonsense word with a few D's in it."

[mpbrockman]

I've never really noticed any difference in quality between the music I produce when I'm inspired to write something and the music I produce when I sit down and say "I'm going to write something now". It's much more about the craft.

A very important part for me is the inspiration to sit down and say "I'm going to write something [or improvise] now."

If I'm improvising ONLY because I've got a show scheduled, I'm probably not going to do very well. If I'm totally inspired or whatever by the night, the people, the audience, the atmosphere, the energy, etc, then I'm much more likely to have a good show.

Interesting. It doesn't work that way for me. I need to schedule "creative time" the way I do anything else, and if I'm not feeling particularly inspired at that moment I start working anyway. Eventually I hit the good stuff.

I'll freely admit, though, that this is a conscious tactic on my part used to overcome my innate laziness. I find "inspired work" and "work" usually yield about the same crap/good stuff ratio, so continually working (whether inspired or not) gives me a much bigger body of useful material.

To go back to the jazz music analogy again, I also find that while I might not be "up" for a performance when it starts, if I just start doing my job - inspiration will come find me much of the time.

OK - I'll shut up now. I try not to chime in on these "Theory & Practice" threads because the music/improv connections aren't always parallel, but I was curious to see what y'all thought about how important "inspiration" was to your process since I've found it so overrated in mine.

I do enjoy reading these, though - it helps me get a better idea of what improvisation is about and how improvisers think. I find that useful for doing my bit. Thanks for the indulgence.

[beardedlamb]

i think the delusions are meant to be moments of insane dreaming or blind optimism, to help pull you through dry spells of creation.

in other words, if you find you write a lot of poems and suddenly you can't write one, it's okay to believe you will some day have a great anthology of your work published, because this keeps you motivated.

the delusion part keeps you plugged in while you're mind is tuned out so that you can return to the work and hit it full steam, even if the dream part has subsided to a more realistic level. otherwise, you check out completely and switch crafts, or drop craft altogether simply because you hit an obstacle and got antsy.

[sara farr]

I think you can be stimulated to produce ideas, and you can train yourself to deliver on stimulus (see Pavlov's Dogs report). The trick is to be able to stimulate yourself... or find a way to maximize the potential for being stimulated.

I teach that to do the best visual brainstorming, my students need to be in the right frame of mind... well-rested, relaxed, fed and in a quiet place w/o distraction. You can set up the right time/environment... and train yourself to deliver consistantly "inspired" material (spontaneous idea generation).

We want our students to get beyond the common, media-driven images and pull out the personal stuff... the thing that is "obvious" to each student through his/her own perspective. We do this by using several tools.

The first is "Free Association"... writing down the visual topic in the center of a page of paper and freely associating with that word to generate new workds, until the page is full. Usually the ideas on the outside of the pager are the personal "unique" ideas, but as students get better at the process, they can tap those unique ideas more quickly.

If they "run out of ideas" before they fill the page, I suggest they look at different interests and put them together ["Merging streams of consciousness"].

We also use the "flip-flop" method, where you reverse a key element in your topic to try to create something new (a la Superman's "Bizzaro World").

And you can create "conflict" within an idea to generate more ideas.

I've also worked with other artsits, passing drawings back and forth, creating "hybrid" drawings. This is probably a slower-than-improv process, but it gets you out of your comfort zone and into "riskier" territory.

We also use "lateral thinking" and "iterative enhancement" to craft inspiration.

Inspiration = idea... Synonyms: afflatus, animus, approach, arousal, awakening, bell-ringer, big idea, brainchild*, brainstorm*, brainwave, creativity, deep think*, elevation, encouragement, enthusiasm, exaltation, fancy, flash*, genius, hunch*, illumination, impulse, incentive, inflatus, influence, insight, motivation, motive, muse, notion, rah rah, revelation, rumble, spark, spark plug, spur, stimulation, stimulus, thought, vision, whim

Craft (noun) = skill... Synonyms: ability, adeptness, adroitness, aptitude, art, artistry, cleverness, competence, cunning, dexterity, expertise, expertness, ingenuity, knack, know-how*, proficiency, technique, workmanship

Craft (verb) =conceive... Synonyms: ad lib, arrange, blueprint*, brainstorm*, cast, chart, cogitate, concoct, construct, contrive, cook up*, craft, create, design, discover, dope out*, dream up, fake it, forge, form, formulate, frame*, get off*, hatch, head trip*, imagine, improvise, intrigue, invent, machinate, make up, mastermind*, noodle, plan, plot, prepare, project, scheme, shape, spark, think up, throw together, trump up*, vamp, whip up*, work out

[kbadr]

It occurs to me that we are talking about two kinds of inspiration. There's inspiration at the very top of the show, and inspiration in the middle of an individual scene. I find that in scenes, it's easy to be inspired if I'm just watching and reacting to my partner.

[kbadr]

Great article by Steve Martin:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-cult ... c=y&page=1

Includes a number of great quotes about performing, including this gem:

I learned a lesson: it was easy to be great. Every entertainer has a night when everything is clicking. These nights are accidental and statistical: like lucky cards in poker, you can count on them occurring over time. What was hard was to be good, consistently good, night after night, no matter what the circumstances.

[scook]

Now that I had assigned myself to an act without jokes, I gave myself a rule. Never let them know I was bombing: this is funny, you just haven't gotten it yet. If I wasn't offering punch lines, I'd never be standing there with egg on my face. It was essential that I never show doubt about what I was doing. I would move through my act without pausing for the laugh, as though everything were an aside. Eventually, I thought, the laughs would be playing catch-up to what I was doing. Everything would be either delivered in passing, or the opposite, an elaborate presentation that climaxed in pointlessness. Another rule was to make the audience believe that I thought I was fantastic, that my confidence could not be shattered. They had to believe that I didn't care if they laughed at all and that this act was going on with or without them.

[apiaryist]

Excellent article. Thanks for posting this.